This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, December 17th, 2007. I'm Caleb Brown.

A new study by the Fiscal Policy Institute shows that immigrants,

legal and otherwise, make a surprisingly large contribution to the economy of New York.

How large a contribution? More than the gross products of 30 U.S.

States. Dan Griswold, the Cato Institute's Director of Trade Policy Studies, offers

his thoughts. Well, this was a fascinating study because it looks at New York City which is a major immigrant state and

there's really two New York's aren't there there's there's New York City and then

there's upstate New York that are very different and yet the study found that

immigrants were making an important contribution in both of these very different areas of New York City.

So this was a major study. On the one hand it was surprising just the,

and the authors of the study pointed this out.

They were surprised at the robust finding

of the contribution immigrants make $229 billion to the state's economy.

A slightly higher percentage of the state's economy accounted for by immigrants than their representation in the population.

But the other interesting thing was how it reinforces what major studies have found in the

past, going back 10 years to the National Academy of Sciences

and the research up until now. This shows consistently that immigrants are

contributing to our economy both on the low end in terms of filling jobs that Americans

are increasingly not interested in in lower paying service sector jobs, but on the higher

end in terms of doctors,

in terms of corporate CEOs, college professors,

it's just a very, I think, encouraging positive snapshot

...